1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printer or the like capable of printing with some process on a printed paper.
2. Related Background Art
Conventionally, this type of printer comprises a print unit for printing on a paper, a plurality of paper cassettes on which papers supplied to the print unit are mounted, a paper sensor for detecting that papers run out in the current paper cassette, a display unit for displaying information such as error information about an error which has occurred during printing or error recovery information, and an operation unit for a user to execute some operation on the basis of information displayed on a display unit.
It is also possible before printing to specify a finishing process on an image printed paper as well as specifying what image is printed. As the finishing process, there can be, for example, fair copy, stapling, punching, and duplex processes.
If the paper runs out in the paper cassette under a paper feed operation, other paper cassettes are displayed on the display unit to cause a user to select an appropriate paper cassette out of them, by which the user can continue the printing.
In the above conventional printer, however, when the user selects a paper cassette due to running out of the paper for printing, just other paper cassettes are displayed on the display unit and it is impossible to present any information about which paper cassette contains papers available for a planned finishing process. Therefore, there is a problem that the planned finishing process cannot be executed by selecting inappropriate papers.
In view of the above problem, it is an object of the present invention to provide a printer which enables a user to select a cassette containing papers available for an appropriate finishing process when selecting another paper cassette to continue the printing in a condition that the print process is interrupted by running out of papers in the current paper cassette.
According to one aspect, the present invention which achieves this object related to a print controller, comprising judgement means for judging a print mode specified by print data from an external apparatus, recording medium type storing means for storing what type of recording medium is mounted on each of the paper cassettes, paper cassette selecting means for causing a user to select a substitute paper cassette when detecting that the recording medium in the current paper cassette runs out in printing the print data, process executable/nonexecutable determination means for determining whether the predetermined process is executable on the recording medium mounted on each of the paper cassettes on the basis of the information obtained from the recording medium type storing means and the print mode judged by the judgement means, and control means for causing a user to select only the paper cassette determined to be executable by the process executable/nonexecutable determination means in the paper cassette selecting means.
According to another aspect, the present invention which achieves this object related to a print controller, comprising judgement means for judging a print mode specified by print data from an external apparatus, recording medium type storing means for storing what type of recording medium is mounted on each of the paper cassettes, paper cassette selecting means for displaying substitute paper cassettes to cause a user to select one of the paper cassettes when detecting that the recording medium runs in the current paper cassette runs out, process executable/nonexecutable determination means for determining whether the predetermined process is executable on the recording media mounted on each of the paper cassettes on the basis of the information obtained from the recording medium type storing means and the print mode judged by the judgement means, and display control means for displaying paper cassettes determined to be executable or nonexecutable by the process executable/nonexecutable determination means so as to be discriminated from each other on the paper cassette selecting means.